Tuff (35 page)

Soon they found themselves treading down a narrow footpath that cut through the innards of the massive Wagner projects. As they stood in the urban gorge there was a roar in the air. The sound of laughter and argument echoed off the sides of the tall brick buildings. Bands of residents could be seen navigating the housing development’s cataracts, wittingly
rushing headlong to the unseen cascades like daredevils in a barrel.
One way to keep people off the streets would be to provide them with air-conditioning
, Spencer thought. “Do you want more questions, Winston?”

“Naw, I’m just going to have to look stupid. But that’s all right, I’m used to it.”

A herd of grade-schoolers detoured around Winston and stampeded past Spencer, almost knocking him down in the process. He looked at his watch. “It’s one-thirty in the morning—do you know where your parents are?”

An eleven-year-old boy, his hair already shorn in a gangster tonsure, moped up to Winston and clasped his hand with a vigorous shake. “When you going to put me down, big man?”

“You know I ain’t out there like that right now, Shorty,” Winston said, palming the boy’s head in his hands.

“I know, I seen the posters. These bummy-ass niggers and some Chinese lady be putting them up all the time.”

“She Japanese.”

“Right, right, whatever. Niggers say you laying in the cut. Niggers say if you walkin’ out of courtrooms free as a beetle, then the mafia backing you. Niggers say that you finally packin’ a toolie. That if you win, bodies going to drop.”

“I ain’t going to win.”

“You packin’ heat, though?”

“That ain’t none of your business.”

“Niggers say you on some syndicate-type shit.”

“Fuck out of here.”

“Niggers say you holding twenty, thirty G’s on the daily. I know you not pushin’ no product, so how you get that kind of scratch? I know, you can’t tell me—just when the time come, hook a young nigger up. I’d like a piece of that mafia lifestyle. Live that ‘wack a nigger here, clip a nigger there’ day to day.”

Winston cut the youngster off with a ten-dollar bill. “You know where to get a Captain Nemo’s chocolate cake around here?” The boy nodded, his hands posed to take the money. “Get me three loosies, a chocolate cake, Captain Nemo’s now, not none of them no-name ghetto snacks, and a tall can of Budweiser.” The boy snatched the money, but Winston held on tight to his end. He tossed his head toward a circle of teenagers standing under a lone elm tree. “I’ll be over there with Bucknaked
and them, okay?” Winston released his grip on the money, sending the boy flying through the projects like a pellet from a slingshot. Winston looked at Spencer, then, cupping his hands over his mouth, shouted down his runner. “Change that Budweiser to two foreign beers! Heineken or some shit!” The boy acknowledged the change in orders with a raise of his hand.

S
itting on top of a pipe rail bordering the walkway, they sipped their canned lagers, Tuffy somehow also managing to smoke a cigarette and lick chocolate frosting off the Nemo’s wrapper. “Shit good, ain’t it, Rabbi?” asked Winston, holding up his green can like an actor in a television commercial. Spencer grinned. Though the first taste of the mundane Dutch import had made him gag, and long for a foamy glass of a Flemish wit bier with a slice of lemon, he had to concur that nothing went better with a humid New York City night than beer—even this vacuum-packed aluminum swill. Beneath the branches of the elm tree, about five yards from Winston and Spencer, the cluster of young men had tightened. A Spanish kid, the color of wet sand, was blowing into his hand as if it were a trumpet’s embouchure. His efforts produced a mélange of beats that varied between the sounds of flatulence, the pings of a drummer’s high hat, and the burps of a jalopy chugging uphill. As his other hand alternately slapped his chest and muted his “horn,” the percussives gained momentum. The other members of the clique, feet planted firmly against the cement like the roots of the nearby tree, began to dip at the knees. A few slowly bobbed and weaved their torsos like boxers practicing dodging punches in the mirror. The rest lifted their hands skyward and bounced in place like Sunday rollers in the first pew catching the Holy Ghost. Even the branches of the elm tree seemed to sway to the beat. And like the singing trees in
The Wizard of Oz
, the teens began spouting frenzied rhymes, trying to solve all the world’s problems in one breath. Spencer wondered if among these young men was the anonymous neologist who invented the ever-mutable New York slang.

Experts in urban eschatology, the rappers’ monodies and laments weaved a dense skein of verse from the spindles of despair and cautious optimism that unraveled from the looms in their hearts and minds. Spencer could only make out the guttural call-and-response what-whats, uh-huhs, okays, mm-hmms, and yes-yes-y’alls. Even Winston, though
somewhat better versed in ghetto colloquialism, understood only about three-quarters of the machine-gun poetics.

A shirtless young man wearing a Jackie Coogan cap and a pair of Tom Sawyer denim overalls peeled away from the group. He weaved toward Winston waving a paper-bagged pint of liquor like a metronome, spewing his freestyle like a drunken Nubian skald.

After Bucknaked dropped his last “lyrical bomb,” the session ended, the rappers’ scorched-earth policy having temporarily defoliated the briar patch that was once the quadrangle of the Wagner projects and left the night as brittle as rice paper. Exhausted and speaking in wheezes, the boys gathered around Winston to catch their breath with small talk.

“With them posters up, nigger, everybody think you rapping.”

“I know.”

“When’s the election?”

“Next Tuesday. Y’all niggers going to vote for me?”

A slender snaggle-toothed boy waved his hand in front of his face.
“Get real, dog. I’m from the projects, dog. That vote shit ain’t for niggers like me.”

Tuffy raised a hand, feigning a backhanded slap in the pessimist’s direction. “Who you think you talking to, a nigger from Mars? What your birth certificate say—‘Place of Birth: Projects’? You better save that ‘I’m from the projects’ bullshit for a somebody that give a fuck.”

The boy shuffled his feet and with sanguine eyes looked up at Winston.

“I ain’t saying waste your vote on me, because I ain’t the somebody that give a fuck, but you need to vote for somebody.”

“Check, Tuff out, son!” one of the group exclaimed. “You been around Smush and Five Percenter shit too long, because you talking in circles now.”

Bucknaked was staring intently at Winston, rubbing his chin. “On the real, yo, I would vote, but that shit just puts me in the system, B. Give them motherfuckers one more address to bust up. Feel me?”

“Man, the worst that can happen is they call you to jury duty.”

“You been called?”

“Had to serve last November. Paid me twenty-five dollars a day or some shit.”

“Federal?”

“I wish. Some joker was suing the electric company.”

“I’m sayin’,” said Bucknaked, feeling his apathy vindicated by Winston’s jury experience, “that right there is why I ain’t registered. What if I get on some boring-ass long-drawn-out case where you have to live in a Roach Motel for six month? I got no time for the city, not for no measly twenty-five a day. I could steal that out my mama’s purse.”

“You would, nigger,” commented the project baby.

“Damn straight. And I have, too,” snorted Bucknaked.

“It ain’t all that. If you don’t like the case it’s ways to get out of it.”

“Like how, nigger?”

“Motherfuckers tried to put me on that electric-company-blew-up-my-house madness. I wasn’t having it—Joe Whiteman vs. Amalgamated So-and-So, who give a fuck? So we broke for lunch, I came back eating a bean pie and holding a copy of
The Final Call
. Headline in big-ass letters:
MINISTER CITES SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE—WHITE MAN IS THE DEVIL
. They wasn’t going to pick me for shit after that. But I got to thinking, as much as I been in court, I ain’t never seen a nigger like me in the jury box.”

Bucknaked reconsidered his stance and in a fit of giddiness started jumping up and down like he’d won some local raffle. “Word life, son. If I was on the jury I be like, ‘Let my people go! Videotape, smideotape! DNA, NBA! The nigger didn’t do it!’ ”

Spencer unzipped his rucksack. The group was startled by the sound like a herd of bucks catching a whiff of the hunter. Their relief was palpable when his hand produced nothing more than a notebook and a pen. For a second Spencer thought he saw a gun in the hands of the buck-toothed kid. Now his hands were empty and Spencer couldn’t guess where he’d stashed his weapon. “Who this nigger, man?”

The pen and paper had increased the discomfort in regard to his presence, and the rappers backed away from him. Spencer waited for Winston to introduce him to his friends to ease the tension. He wondered what would be the term of endearment: Big Brother, Rabbi Spence, Ace?
He’s a Jew, but he’s all right
.

Winston snatched the pad out of Spencer’s hand. “Fuck you doing?”

“I’m just jotting down some thoughts for the next installment. I don’t want to forget anything.” Winston tossed the book back to Spencer and said, “Big Brother, Little Brother over. Rabbi, you need to be out. This ain’t no zoo.”

“Who is this nigger, G?”

“Nobody. Motherfucker just writing some article about me for the paper. Some King-of-the-Jungle-type shit. But the safari over now.”

Spencer wanted to defend his actions but knew that anything he’d say would sound hollow. Goose bumps rose on his skin. He felt as if he were shrinking before Winston, soluble in his own bullshit, his body bubbling and floating toward the sky in tiny pieces like an antacid tablet dissolving into the night. Before disappearing completely, he turned to leave. “See you tomorrow afternoon at the debate, okay? Two-thirty?”

Winston wrested the paper bag from Bucknaked, took a long pull from the bottle, then slung an arm around his friend’s shoulders. Together they and rest of the boys bopped down a labyrinthian walkway and into the depths of the Wagner Projects. This level of hell was off limits to Spencer, and he began the trek back to his car, feeling slighted he hadn’t been introduced, and guilty for taking out his notebook. He knew that he’d never have the access to Winston the others had, and it suddenly dawned on him why: he was more afraid
of
Winston than
for
him. Afraid of his reputation. Afraid of his latent intellect. Afraid of being judged—and being judged fairly.

As Spencer walked to the edge of the apartment complex, the boy who’d fetched Winston the beer and cake jumped in front of him. “Hey yo,” the imp said, stepping directly in his path. “My man say you gave him a Frisbee.” Spencer followed the boy’s outstretched arm across a small patch of grass and recognized the child he’d given the Frisbee to after his first visit to Winston’s. “Yes, I did.”

“Do you have any more, mister?”

It was an innocent request, and for the first time the kid’s tone of voice matched his age. Regretfully, Spencer shook his head and lightly reached out to touch the youngster’s forehead. He’d just started to mumble a benediction when the boy slapped his hand away and yelled, “Well, fuck you then!”

O
n the stage of the community center’s auditorium, Winston, dressed in pleated slacks and shirt and tie, was fidgeting in his seat, fighting the tedium of democracy. He’d finished his pitcher of water before the associate director of the New York chapter of the NAACP had finished welcoming the sparse audience to the debate. Now the moderator, the managing editor of
El Diario
newspaper, was reviewing the ground rules. Each candidate would have three minutes for opening remarks, after which the moderator would read questions submitted by the audience on index cards.

“I’m qualified to represent District 8 because I am a mother.…” Margo Tellos was at the microphone, giving her opening remarks. Tuffy studied the other candidates seated on either side of him. Two seats to his left, Wilfredo Cienfuegos, dressed like he was going ballroom dancing, was softly rehearsing his speech.
“Buenas noches
to the barrio.
Mi barrio, su barrio, nuestro barrio …”
Next to Cienfuegos sat Collette Cox. She had her head in her lap, faking a meditative pose, but was clandestinely scratching an instant-win lottery ticket, praying for a third dollar sign. Coming up empty, she ripped the ticket in half and adjusted her campaign button. On Winston’s immediate right was Tellos’s empty seat. Beyond it, a sharp, conservatively dressed middle-aged man he’d never seen before,
taking notes on a yellow legal pad.
Who this nigger?
Leaning forward, he tried to read the man’s paper nameplate. Just then Margo Tellos took her seat to polite applause, forcing Winston to sit back in his chair and join in. She scooted her chair under the table, condescendingly smiling at him as if she were Kennedy looking down his nose at Nixon in 1960.

“And now our most accomplished candidate …” The unknown man stood up. “German Jordan is a noted philosophical, political, and critical thinker. He’s written a number of scholarly works, his most recent being
Setting My Sights Low: Why I Chose to Be a City Councilman Instead of President
. Ladies and gentlemen, just back from a space-shuttle mission to resume his campaign, I give you professor, theologian, astronaut, renaissance man, and the Eighth District’s incumbent councilman, German Jordan.”